My Published Articles for ViewsHound: January 2025

Sunday, January 12, 2025

What is Grief? Some Memorable Photos of 2024

Grief- A Lesson from the Past!

This is what grief is.

A hole ripped through the very fabric of your being.

The hole eventually heals along the jagged edges that remain. It may even shrink in size.

But that hole will always be there.

A piece of you always missing.

For where there is deep grief, there was great love.

Don’t be ashamed of your grief.

Don’t judge it.

Don’t suppress it.

Don’t rush it.

Rather, acknowledge it.

Lean into it.

Listen to it.

Feel it.

Sit with it.

Sit with the pain. And remember the love.

This is where the healing will begin.

“Grief shows up when it wants to. … No matter what you think, no matter how much time has passed, it’ll show up.”
—Tyler Perry

Meanwhile, Here are some memorable photos/mementos that maybe able to cheer you!

Chef Agustin and the Newton's Restaurant_ Photo from the THD FaceBook Page

Filipino Food Galore---New Cravings- besides Dungeness crabs

Macrine (RIP) and I Dancing the Tango, Boac, Marinduque, Philippines, 2017-Pleasant Memories 

Ditas Short Visit here at THD at Brunch Time, The Newton's Restaurant, THD, September 15, 2024

Photo from the THD FaceBook Page- September 17, 2024-. Mary Fenelon, John and Carol Larimore and ME. This photo was taken during my first week of Being a Greeter, introducing the Larimores' to a few Residents at Dinner Time. This photo is also featured on THD Video Advertising in FaceBook.

A stunning Fire Rainbow, 2024- One of my Memorable Photo in my Collection!

Meanwhile, I won again in the Monday Night Football Poll and shared it with Chuck Daggett. 

and Lastly, I Have received  a Christmas card from the White House this Year, 2024-Worth Framing- My Long lasting Memories of Joe Biden and his Presidency. Good Bye, Joe! 

Thank You, Joe & Jill Biden and Willow.  Willow is the President Pet Cat, residing in the White House. I will always remember your Presidency and your Legacy 💚to the Nation. Enjoy Your Retirement!  President Biden last Day is this coming January 19, 2025. Trump Inauguration Day is January 20, 2025.   Did you received an Invitation from Trump?  

💚 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/opinion/joe-biden-legacy-tragedy-pride.html

Friday, January 10, 2025

Paintings on the First and Second Floor Hallways of the Heritage Building

In my previous posting, I have several comments on my postings on the paintings decorating the hallways on the three floors of the Fairmont Building ( THD). One of the comments, I received that the paintings in the Fairmont Building is inferior than the ones decorating the hallways of the Heritage Building. I was curious if this comment is true, so I took sometime to take photos of some of the Paintings in all the four floors of the Heritage Building- The oldest of the 4 buildings in this compound (THD). Here are the photos on the first and second Floor of the Heritage Building.

Here are the paintings, I took on the Second Floor of the Heritage Building

My next blog will be the Paintings on the third and 4th Floor of the Heritage Building

So, if you have seen the paintings in the Fairmont Building, Do you agree that the paintings above are more superior than the paintings in the Fairmont Building? Do you have any favorites? Let me hear from you!

Thursday, January 9, 2025

Katague Grand Children Marinduque Vacation Photos

Getting Ready for a Round Trip Tour of the Island Via The Jeepney. The Jeepney is a type of public utility vehicle (PUV) that serves as the most popular means of public transportation in the Philippines.

In my previous postings, Marina sent me photos from their recent vacation in Manila and surrounding Suburbs. They stayed in the big city for 3 days and went to Marinduque- the location of Chateau Du Mer- my former retirement home and beach house in the Philippines. Alix was with her husband Brendan. Marina was with her partner Wyatt. Philip went along with them. They send photos of the Beach house, and the tourist spots they have visited in the small island of Marinduque. Marinduque is often called the Heart of the Philippines and the Lenten Capital of the Southern Tagalog Region because of it annual celebration of the Moriones Festival during Easter Week. Here are some of the photos of their trip.

Mt Malinding and White Beach, Torrijos, Marinduque ( below is my own photo)

For comparative purposes, the following are photos of Chateau Du Mer in the Years of its Grandeur. I encourage you to open it and ponder at the dramatic difference when a place is maintained as a residence and business compared to when it is vacant with no daily personal care and maintenance.

https://theintellectualmigrants.blogspot.com/2020/02/old-but-treasured-photos-from-my-album.html

Wednesday, January 8, 2025

Responses for Updating My Distribution List for 2025

The other day I sent the following E-mail to about 100 names in my Distribution List. Half of the list are my co-residents here at THD. I believe about 10% in my list are not reading my blogs regularly. I would like to delete their names to declutter.

" I am cleaning clutter of my E-mail and Distribution List. If you are reading this E-mail, I would appreciate if you tell me you want continue reading my blogs for 2025. Otherwise if I do not hear from you in the next couple of days, I may remove your name in my DL list for my blogs. If You are one of my loyal reader, my million thanks and again my wish for a Prosperous and Productive 2025".

So far, I received a confirmation for Continuation from around 50 readers, one to Discontinue and some with comments (18) that I am reposting. It will be anonymous for privacy reasons.

1. l look forward to your blogs, David. I find them very informative and insightful especially about things happening at THD. And your years of experience about life in general and the way you present them in your special personal way.

2. I am a loyal reader. I found your blogs informative.

3. Keep my name on your list.  Look forward to reading your daily blogs.

4. David, I want to continue reading your blogs, not just for enlightenment, but to watch for what others say about THD! LOL, ♥️

5. Thanks for your daily blogs -- your windows into our world! Keep it coming!

6. Please keep my name on your send list, David…I do enjoy reading your daily blogs.

Thanks so much. Happy and healthy new year to you and yours!

7. Please keep sending. I enjoy your blogs

8. Please keep me in your list. I believe your blogs enhances our sense of community and belonging here at THD.

9. Do not remove my name on your DL list. I found your blog informative and at times inspiring.

10. I learned a lot about the Philippines from your blogs. Keep me on the List. I wish I had travel to the Philippines during my younger years.

11. I enjoyed the Meal time conversation segment in your blogs. Keep me on your list.

12. Keep me on the list. I enjoy reading your articles on Senior Citizen issues

13. Keep me Informed. Thanks, as always, David, for enriching our understanding of our complex home, the planet earth.

14. Do not removed me, David, your blogs open another window into our world, here at THD.

15. Keep me in the list. Your blog photos just keep enriching our worlds.. thanks, David!

16. I read your blogs every other day. I enjoyed them, but has no time to make comments.

17. Yes!! I’m in.. I read your blogs each day but rarely respond as I think my responses don’t “go through. I’m currently absorbing the wonderful “80’s… wow!!

18. Hi Dave, Just to let you know that l enjoy reading your blogs - very informative as you touch a variety of topics to write about. Take care.

The rest of the responses were: Keep me on your list! Again to my loyal readers and to those who responded quickly, my million Thanks, Muchas Gracias, Danke, Merci, Mahalo and Maraming Salamat.

Lastly, here are 2 more buds of my amaryllis Plant. Looking forward for the full blooms.

and Batman and Robin enjoying the Patio today.

Guest Article from Susan Creamer Joy

In The Silence, by Susan Creamer Joy.

Today's guest article is from Susan Creamer Joy. Susan is one of my favorite authors in the ViewsHound community. Susan writes, draws, paints and cobbles together art from found objects making a variety of creations from jewelry to religious shrines. She frequently sports burns on her fingers from her soldering iron, paint on her palms and ink under her fingernails, but her hair is usually combed. When she is not losing time in the creative vortex of her studio, she is likely to be putting her knowledge of metaphysics and esoteric principles including Tarot, numerology, astrology and graphology to good use in consultations. Her children are grown, her husband still works and her four dogs believe she needs serious help. The title of her article is "A Matter Of Love And Death". Thank you Susan.

By the time they reached my bedroom door, I was already sitting up – my stomach ratcheted in the tense grip of an unnamed anxiety; my pillow, unburdened of my drowsy head.

To this day I cannot explain how I heard them coming up those stairs in their bare feet or how I knew that my father struggled to hold his composure as my mother unnaturally clutched at the folds of her dressing gown and followed him through the dark just a little too closely.

As the wooden groan of those old stairs tore into my bones that morning like a hacksaw, all I could see between the predawn shadows was the letter I’d written just hours earlier to my boyfriend, Chris, propped against the lamp on my desk across the room awaiting an envelope.

I had not slept well. It was late November and there had been so many changes since the middle of August when he left for the Air Force in Texas to begin basic training and I began my third new school in as many years.

The conspiracy between fate and the last surge of the Vietnam draft had broken apart the every-waking-minutes of our two-year union with unceremonious indifference. All that night my sleep had been infested by difficult dreams and by the illogical fear that truth and reality were merging into a darkness only a martyr could grasp; and at sixteen, martyrdom seemed reasonable only for the nuns among the poor in Bangladesh

I tried to remind myself that he would be home on leave for Thanksgiving in another few days. It was the only tether to calm I could find, but reviewing the facts offered little relief from my baseless fears.

Chris had been girding his pacifist sensibilities preparing to fight in an unpopular war that had not yet slaughtered its last innocent. I was hovering just over the line of inclusion at an exclusive girl’s school – missing him – and finding myself at odds with these young women and their attachment to propriety and with the prep-school veneer that blinded them to the fact that they were no better than anyone else.

Neither one of us was coping well with the worlds into which we were respectively summoned, and although we both knew that the best hope for any future together depended upon our individual successes apart, it was far from comforting most days.

But in spite of our discomfort, we each did our best; and, of course, there were the letters: Thin, plain-paper sheets with row after row after row of inky blue words penned with the intensity and awkward locutions of a love learned too soon. It had come down to just that little, but without them, I would have had nothing.

Chris was learning to fly. I was learning to drive, and both of us were aching to transport our souls to an earlier time through the hallowed intercourse of memories and dreams. Of course, as with all progress, there was the positive element: We were both clean and drug-free for the first time in years.

Now, without pretense, both healthy cognition and sincere motivation surfaced regularly in my psychology and prompted me to care about myself and to arbitrate against all temptation for a better standing in the world, in school and in my own eyes. I even did my homework.

No longer was I escaping today but, instead, living for my day of escape. Lying still in the dark of my room, I listened to the slow, padded footfall of my parents approaching and looked to the floor and to my history book half hidden beneath the nightstand where I’d tossed it the night before. Even in this early morning dark I could make out the swirls and stars in colored marker and the bubble-formed letters that spelled C H R I S in soft, juvenile curves on the torn book cover I’d fashioned out of a brown paper grocery bag.

I vaguely remembered throwing it there somewhat hastily. I had been doing my homework when a sense of urgency struck and I realized I had not written him as I promised I would and glancing at the clock, I noted it was nine-twenty-three. Why that mattered I had no way of knowing in that strange moment, but within hours, it would be one I would never forget; and although I was becoming drowsy and still needed to finish my work, I felt beyond reason that my letter to him could not wait.

So, I wrote. I would always write. I would always be there. He would always be there.“Suzi."It was my name spoken in the smooth and familiar voice of my mother, although weighted and slow, her head bowed to her chest almost as though she were speaking only to herself.

"Suzi.” She said it again, this time with sharp gravity, like a chisel against stone.

As if on cue, I leaned forward, flanked now by my parents who were sitting on either side of my bed.

I had been waiting for them. I don’t know how. I didn’t know why. The lights in my room remained off, but it seemed that the darkness clung more to them than to me, as though they were holding it there – away from me to give me enough light to see through the next moment. They were crying. My father was crying. My father. “Suzi. We have something very, very bad to tell you." Chris has been in a car accident." And he was killed."

If the world moved forward from that moment, I could not know it. f there were air around me worth breathing, I could not take it in. And if there were another sound beyond the leaden bellow of my own raw grief, I could not hear it.

"Who am I going to talk to? Who am I going to love?” I wailed. Who will love me? In that sodden moment violated by the intrusion of a predawn light that had no business rising, everything I ever believed about happiness, hoped for in life, trusted in or held as my own was annihilated.

After that – there was no after that. After that came months of hollow redundancies that would inform my way of being in the world for years to come. A serial commitment to waking up each morning, remembering he was gone and dedicating the remaining hours to forgetting. To that end I would try anything, drink anything, ingest anything, inject anything. It was a slow and arbitrary suicide by indifference.

Many years later, at 25 years-old and in the midst of a pharmaceutical free-fall leaning dangerously close to terminal, I discovered that I was expecting a child, and after a decade of forgetting, I remembered. I named him Griffin after the legendary winged lion, a symbol of the divine because what he inspired and the miracle that he was, were nothing less. I remembered and I loved again, and I went on to marry and to the gift of two beautiful daughters.

Today my son is struggling not to drown in the same well of drug abuse and apathy that almost swallowed me – his great, divine wings clipped by his own hand; and while it is up to him to restore his place in the sky, I will do my best to help provide an open runway.

In the meantime, I will continue soaring for both of us; bequeathed as I have been, with a determination to fly from a boy whose ragged fate precluded that dream.

Death took one young man from me once upon a dark time. If it has any intention of coming for this one, it will have to go through me. And trust me, it will be in for one hell of a fight.

Note: If you enjoy this article, please let me know.